“She thought I was the one who convinced Hëró to up her security detail—to keep her at my house and Stökéwood as long as possible. She thought that colleagues from Hero Pharm had immediately convinced me that was the only sane response. You remember the little creatures, whispering into the ear of the boy? Those were Hero Pharm men. Brainwashing me against her, supposedly.”

I try to align his story with hers. But it’s what comes before the little creatures that confuses me. The bloodsucking. The bloodsucking that healed her and tickled his fancy. It’s carnal and dark—nothing at all like a friendship. It’s a toxic relationship. White Fox needed something the boy could give, and the deeply wounded, isolated boy sapped her of her very life when they met. Until the little creatures all but pulled him away.

“But what about before the creatures pulled him away?”

He stares at me, uncomprehending. “What do you mean?”

“The boy drew the life from White Fox.” My voice is quiet, measured. But it’s my boldest statement yet. I’m asking: Did you hurt her? How?

His eyes fix themselves on mine, with a flash of something like frustration, like I’m a problem to be fixed, and my hands clench around my cup. Suddenly, the room feels zoomed in and small.

The instinctive part of me, that ribbing that hems me in, is screaming at me, for the very first time, to be afraid of my uncle.

“You know that I was still building the final version of Pocket Girlfriend then, right?”

I didn’t, but I nod.

“After her career started to dip, she … changed. She wasn’t her bubbly, spirited self anymore. That self was a lot like you, actually,” he says, cupping my chin with a grin. When I don’t smile back, he releases me. “Anyway, I was worried her old self would be completely lost. I knew that creative projects always lifted her spirits. So I asked her to answer a series of questions for me to help with the last build of Pocket Girlfriend. All sorts of things—personality questions. The kind you would ask a blind date, and much deeper ones. I don’t know if they amused her, but she humored me, at least. And I saw the old Mireille in her answers. It was as if the stories she’d told herself over the years hadn’t yet changed in her head. It was a beautiful thing.” The room of bears spins behind him, their deflated faces twisted, patched, mournful.

“So I—I coded her answers into the Pocket Girlfriend. Well, the answers and more. Everything I knew about her. Everything she’d ever said. I got carried away.” He looks up at me, and I can’t tell from the pink of his cheeks if he’s ashamed or proud.

I think I stop breathing for a minute. “What does that mean?”