“Hit her head on the counter,” he says, in between sobs. He looks up at us, blinking through the tears, wiping his face. “But she got up,” he says. “She got up. She was fine. Her head was bleeding, but she was fine. I swear. I saw her get up. She looked at me with utter hatred. It’s a look I’ll never forget. And then she took her purse, the red crocodile one, and ran out of the door and into the woods. She was barefoot. I followed her, telling her to come back. Telling her I was sorry. Telling her I would do whatever she wanted. I tried to find her, but she ran so fast. I lost her in the woods outside of here. I swear to you both; I lost her.” Mina continues beeping, and he finally notices. “Mina, can you shut the hell up?”

She beeps agreeably outside.

“Why do you have her shoes and gloves and sweater hidden in your room?” Tai says in a monotone. I’ve never heard her sound that way. “In the princess room,” she adds. She won’t look at him.

He clears his throat, not one flicker of surprise passing over his face. “I’m getting there. The gray sweater snagged on a tree and came off her while she was running, and it had blood on it. So I picked it up. And then I came back into the house to figure out what to do, and I saw that she’d left her shoes and her gloves from earlier in the kitchen, right there, where we were fighting. And—and I just took them. I behaved recklessly. I knew she would never talk to me again when she came back. I knew she would probably tell Hëró, and everything would change. And I loved her so much, and I just wanted to keep a piece of her. Is that unforgiveable? So I just took them with me. I took them with me, and I—I left.”

“You left her, bleeding from the head and running barefoot in the woods,” I say. “You let her run all night. You didn’t tell anyone.”

“I chased her all night, trying to find her,” he replies, hands clenching into fists.

It hits me all at once: Teddy’s not the vampyrrhic boy. He wanted to capture and possess Mama in his Pocket Girlfriends, in his Carers.

I can see the script in my head:

I cut down trees that are invisible. I replant them afterward. And with their endless lumber, I create my world and my friends.

Invisible, endless lumber being code for code.

WHITE FOX (V.O.)