On this stretch of forest road far west of the city, we’ve hardly seen a building for half an hour, much less a single soul. The dancing green foliage outside threatens to burst through the car’s windows at every turn. This surreal green is home, in a way that sends a chill up my spine. It smells of moss, thyme, and earth, intermingled.

But I can’t shake this feeling we’re being watched, by someone quiet, someone careful. I’ve felt that way ever since we landed—I froze at baggage claim, where a group of elderly locals followed us like ghosts, whispering with half smiles and gesturing with wrinkled hands. When I told Tai, she replied casually, “Of course people are watching us. We’re practically royalty.” A stranger with gnarled, arthritic fingers helped her lift her luggage off the carousel.

Now, Tai reaches her phone across my body, toward the window on my sunnier side.

“Must you?” I ask, swatting her hand away.

“I’m just sending Linos a photo so he knows I’m here,” she explains, as if Linos Arnoix, Viloxin’s resident Narcissus, has ever noticed anything beyond his own aristocratic reflection.

She won’t even tell me if they’re dating. If pressed, she says they’re just friends. Tai taps away, the volume on her phone excruciatingly turned up all the way. “And yes, I can hear you judging me and shitting on him inside your brain, by the way,” she adds, eyes and fingertips glued to her screen. “Your skull’s not that thick.”

I would open my mouth to tell her I don’t think she meant to say that, but it’s not worth the oxygen.

When we reach Stökéwood’s gate—a movable, massive iron fence straight out of a Gothic novel—the driver buzzes the house via the intercom about a dozen times, to no avail. When I punch in the gate code I remember, nothing happens, either. Only then does my heart start to falter, like it’s missing a beat in my chest. Random childhood memories stab me—Tai skinning her knees on the gravel a few feet off; Mama tying red balloons to the fence before a birthday party. I know this gate. But where is everyone? We knew Teddy wouldn’t be here—he sent the car to pick us up—but we didn’t expect to arrive at an empty house that wouldn’t let us in.

Now that seems naive.

Tai, the driver, and I heave ourselves against the prickly iron gate until it scrapes against stone and opens enough to let the car through. As we drive up the winding, forest-lined path, I look ahead for any sign of our home itself, but the trees are overgrown, shadowing the gravel.