“I met Hérrakí last-minute to get him to look up Mitso Arakit in his uncle’s files—”

I shoot to my feet, all control disintegrating in one ashy, searing flash. “What the fuck? You met up with him, knowing what we know?”

“We know nothing at all, Tai.” Her stony expression stirs up an old bitterness in me. “How do you not see that? We need to figure out what she found out. There’s more to the Mitso Arakit–Hero Pharm story. More Dad hid from us. More Teddy doesn’t know or refuses to tell us. We shouldn’t trust them. I told you from the beginning, we can’t trust any—”

“Seriously? Do you think that’s fair?” I try to slow my breathing, but I feel like a hot-air balloon, filling and rising up and up and up, everything out of my control, especially the fiery heat in my belly. “They’ve done nothing but love us.”

She shakes her head at me slowly, disgust coiled in her eyes like a snake. “How can you not see that Teddy and Dad both lied to us? When’s the last time you used a brain cell? In utero?”

“They’re protecting us.” I cross my trembling arms. “They wouldn’t lie without a very good reason to lie.”

She scoffs, raising clawed hands to her face like I’m giving her a coronary, when really my heart’s about to burst. “So—what? We let this go and wait for Mama to contact us again, if she ever does?” Her eyes shine, scaly with hurt now, and it scares me how fast they shift. “I’m not doing that. I can’t just go back to my sparkly life in New York and delude myself like you and drown—”

“And drown myself in strangers’ attention—yeah, I’ve heard this shit before.” My back stiffens; my bones ache from the heat. “You’re so good at making it sound like I do all of this just for fun. Maybe you’re the dense one.” Her eyes squint at me as I continue. “Seriously, I know I’m the high school dropout, but how oblivious can you be? You do realize that my job drowning myself in strangers’ attention pays our bills until the trust kicks in, right? Your fucking college tuition. I don’t see you pursuing one of the trust-approved hard science degrees.” My locked arms go numb as I think of all the terse conversations I’ve had with Aunt Marion in the past year. You’re making the mistake of your life by dropping out of school for this, paycheck or not. Your parents wouldn’t have wanted you to give up your education to work as a professional narcissist. This coming from the same Aunt Marion who burned through so much of the money Dad gave her to care for us on artists’ retreats and endless courses to “discover her true potential.”