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Dedication

For my favorite human,
C, with the crushed-ice eyes
and the laugh like a song
I want to play on repeat

BOY

CLIP FROM NOT ANOTHER GIRL OF ICE (1978)

Mireille Foix, age sixteen, winner of the Best Actress Award at the 1978 Cannes Film Festival

[Film rolls]

The scene opens in a midnight wood, dense and tangled, its rotting breath palpable. The locals call it Delirium Forest, and it’s famous for devouring people whole, for reshaping the most solid of realities. A figure is visible inside, the moss-choked air around it glowing like an aura. The figure seems to float above the forest’s gnarled roots, impervious to its thorns, its nettles, its spines and raking branches. As the figure moves deeper inside, its luminescence fades, and a deep, guttural buzzing builds.

At the fringe of the forest, a scummy parking lot, tongued by sagging bags of trash. And there, beside them: a broken form, lying in a growing pool of his own blood, thick as ink. A black cat edges around the mess, sniffing.

“Leave it,” a woman’s voice hisses, a static burst, and the cat skitters away.

The woman’s wearing a ripped white camisole and fuchsia hotpants; she’s gripping a tire iron, white-knuckled and red-eyed. Platinum hair. Chapped, bitten lips. Without even seeing her whole face, we know she is beautiful and that her beauty is like a fishhook: delicate, sharp, designed with ancient wisdom to hurt, to trap. She rests the tire iron on her shoulder, and its rusted edge drips fresh crimson freckles on her and the torn camisole strap.

The woman: She’s no more than sixteen, all bruised skin and bird bones, the icy-blond wig on her head askew. Shivering in muddy boots.

She doesn’t notice us.

She’s staring into the woods. Faintly luminous, still. The humming grows louder, more ominous, and the woman leaves the safety of the bloodied asphalt to meet it. Her eyes never stray from the wild deep as she is guided away from us. Away from us, and into the carnivorous dark beyond. The droning intensifies, into its cracking and fizzing crescendo, until the woman finally—disappears.

[Film stops]

Mireille Foix possesses Grace Kelly’s elegance crossed with Audrey Hepburn’s mischievousness, Katharine Hepburn’s wit, and Marilyn Monroe’s pure, languid sex. She was born and raised on the mysterious Mediterranean island of Viloxin, and her idyllic childhood—spent free-diving for scallops with her fisherman father (now deceased) in a whitewashed cottage on the forested fringes of a minuscule seaside town—is nothing short of mythical. Today, she is her country’s greatest cultural export and patron, thanks to her Foix Institute. She is also the last Star with a capital S, deemed the most beautiful, charismatic, and intuitive woman living today by a swath of Tinseltown A-listers. Mireille Foix is a goddess, come to Hollywood on her golden Viloki scallop shell.

—Vogue magazine, 1996

To most, the name Henry Hammick still conjures an image of a shadow in a lab coat: mysterious, bizarre, impenetrable. What were we to make of this monolith of a man who left behind his family, his career, and his home country to start over on an isolated, volcanic Mediterranean island half a world away? He moved to Viloxin in the 1970s at the age of thirty and never looked back. Since launching his groundbreaking pharmaceutical company, Hero Pharmaceuticals, Hammick’s team has single-handedly introduced several history-changing medications and medical devices, most notably Ladyx, a treatment that slows the growth of many cancers.

Hammick has immersed himself in everything Viloki, from studying the largely unknown island history and social practices to Viloxin’s poignant poetry and burial customs. His command of the local language, Vilosh, has awed scholars. And now, after earning Viloki citizenship for himself, Henry Hammick has taken a traditional Viloki name for legal reasons: Hëró. Yes, it’s pronounced Hero, just like the name of his company. But don’t hold it against him: Hëró Hammick, founder of Hero Pharmaceuticals—now worth billions of newly minted euros—is this decade’s God among men.

—Time magazine, 1997

The Foix-Hammicks believe Viloxin is their Camelot. Their Eden. Do I find this realistic? No. I certainly do not. They know nothing of this island, nor even of themselves. My family has been here hundreds of years, documenting its darkest nooks and its myriad depths, and I can assure you: The Foix-Hammick family does not venture below the surface in any of its endeavors—especially Mireille Foix Hammick’s so-called White Fox film script. It is no Holy Grail. And no script—no family—concerns me. Despite their best efforts, they too shall disappear from our city, from our volcanic hills, from our lavender-scented meadows—in due time.

—Antella Arnoix, March 2009

RUNAWAY FOIX ON VILOXIN!
POLICE COMMISSIONER CONCLUDES
THAT MIREILLE ABANDONED HER CUBS.

—The Viloki Sun, July 2009

One year ago today, beloved film star Mireille Foix disappeared from her grand country home, Stökéwood, taking with her a crocodile purse, an Hermès scarf, one pair of calfskin gloves—and the only known copy of her secret film script, White Fox. The Viloki Sun gained exclusive access to a segment of this script, photographed by Foix’s former manager, Daria Grendl, in the months preceding Foix’s disappearance. It is speculated by some that White Fox possesses clues to Mireille Foix’s current whereabouts—or to a shocking discovery she made before she vanished—as it eerily references the very items that went missing with her. Some call it the Viloki Holy Grail, claiming that Mireille Foix hid the secrets to building the ideal society inside.

Read on to discover for yourself a chilling excerpt, transcribed here from Grendl’s photo. The world may never have the chance to see what might be this legend’s greatest work.

Captor opens White Fox’s red purse and looks through the contents.

CAPTOR (V.O.)

You say you are strong, but I know you cannot stomach the polluted mess in the mirror. Cannot reconcile it with the beautiful fantasy world you created around yourself.

Captor examines a pair of calfskin gloves, a wallet. Captor finds photographs.

CAPTOR (V.O.) (CONT’D)

A world of unbridled hope, of answered prayers, of selfless goodness, of smiling children—

Captor flips through photographs, finding one of smiling children. Two girls, beautiful girls, their identities unknown.

CAPTOR (V.O.)

How sweet the photograph was, inside your ruined red purse.

Captor reenters chamber with clients inside and watches White Fox, now stone-faced.

CAPTOR (V.O.)

Evolve or die, White Fox, dear. Evolve or die.

Who is this captor? Grendl is staying mum.

“I simply thought it would be edifying for investigators and those who loved Mireille alike to understand her mindset prior to her departure,” Grendl explains. “It should be plain to readers that a troubled Mireille felt trapped and ran off.”

Read on for Grendl’s exclusive list of Mireille’s Viloxin haunts—ideal for those seeking a warm weather escape!

—The Viloki Sun, May 24, 2010

HERO TO HERMIT! “HE’S SICK, PARANOID, IRRESPONSIBLE—AND HE REFUSES TO LEAVE HIS STÖKÉWOOD HOME,” SAYS HERO PHARM BOARD MEMBER.

—The Viloki Sun, January 2014

NONI

NEW YORK, 2014

Two blocks from our home, an underground psychic was waiting for us with a secret message. Her basement shop blends into the row of dirt-encrusted town houses on West Tenth Street during the day, but at night the shop’s magical features come alive: carefully painted wood paneling; a neat row of budding, overgrown plants; and a buzzing neon sign of a purple crystal ball.

“You have the money, right?” Tai whispers to me, between blowing on her hands, that shock of cherry hair in her face.

It’s been five years since Mama disappeared, but strangers still notice us on the street sometimes, whispering “Is that…?” to their friends with that sideways-sneak look, so we had decided to wear plain brown wigs tonight to stay incognito. But then Tai wanted to use the red one from her devil costume, and Tai gets what she wants. You’re only thirteen, Aunt Marion cried, when she saw the crop top and leather miniskirt my sister was wearing. Mama wore a thong swimsuit in a movie when she was thirteen, Tai snapped back.

I hike up my loose jeans and pull the envelope out of my fleece sweatshirt’s kangaroo pocket. “Two hundred big ones,” I whisper back. We had been saving for months.

Tai grabs my shoulders and squeals, this infectious grin spreading from one bubble gum–pink cheek to the other. There’s so much innocent hope in her lined-and-mascaraed blue eyes, so much it makes me quiver, but of course I’m smiling back before I know it. Tonight could give us clues, if not answers. My stomach hasn’t felt settled in days.

Tai follows me down the steps, and we push inside the storefront—a bell jingles. The entry room is dark: patchy red velvet seating and finger-thick vines crawling everywhere. The smell of patchouli mixed with something heady and sweet, like cloves in hot wine. A stained, paisley curtain fringed in golden thread blocks our view into the back. A lone television on the wall plays a grainy video of spooky nature scenes on silent loop: a duck moving across a shadowy pond, wet red leaves falling from a tree, a lush forest that looks familiar.

“Hello?” Tai calls, scratching at her wig’s netting.

Wind chimes tinkle in the back. I pull Tai onto the lumpy love seat up front just as a black cat pushes through the curtain—a furry lump in its mouth—and bounds up onto its window seat in between two ferns. It drops its catch and paws at it.

“Ew,” Tai whispers, before rubbing at her bare legs. “What time is it?”

“It’s eight-oh-one,” I whisper back, just as she walks through the curtain, short and squat and dressed in black silk from head to toe: the imposing Madame Morency.

“Carmela!” She claps at the cat. “You promised your days hunting young and delicate creatures were over.”

The cat yowls, and Madame Morency notices the two of us, clutching hands on the love seat, our hearts beating too fast in the small room.

“You’re my eight o’clock, ladies?” she says in her deep rasp, head tipping to the side. “Sisters. You’re very young. What loss could you have possibly suffered?”

Tai’s purple nails dig into my skin.

“How old are you, exactly?”

“Aren’t you a psychic?” Tai says, before I even open my mouth. “We’re eighteen,” she adds, with that confidence of hers that springs up from nowhere.

Madame Morency’s lip quirks. “I will not begin any session without honesty and an open mind. It’s best you see yourselves out.”

“There’s no legal age requirement to visit a fortune-teller in New York State,” I reply, sweating hands squirrelling into my sweatshirt pocket. My lips snag on my braces. “Telling fortunes in general is a class B misdemeanor, anyway, though, and—”

“Fine,” Tai interrupts, just as Madame Morency crosses her arms at me. “We’re just kids. But we did lose someone important when we were really young. And we made this appointment because we need your help to reach her.” She holds out the envelope of money. “Won’t you help us?”

Madame Morency inhales and exhales, and as she does, something behind her eyes softens. I know it’s not just pity. Everyone softens when they look at Tai: Her daintiness, her toughness, and her beauty combine to make her special. Mireille Foix Hammick–special.

“Follow me,” Madame Morency says, taking the envelope and stuffing it into her waistband before shuffling back through the curtain.

Tai grabs my wrists and squeals again, eyes flashing brighter than neon.

The cramped back room is lit by dozens of candles. Two bookshelves overflow with rotten-smelling books and strange artifacts borrowed from a nightmare: a set of golden teeth, vials of amber liquid swirling with many-legged creatures, and a tiny, misshapen skull (the cat’s victim comes to mind). We settle at a rickety, black cloth–covered table, across from Madame Morency, who peers at us with the heavy-lidded yet sharp eyes of someone who sees too much every day.

“Where are your cards?” Tai asks, examining the empty table before us, like something will push through the cloth at any moment. “Or, like, your crystal ball?”

“I do things differently.” Madame Morency extends her veined, wrinkled hands across the table. “I don’t even need my eyes to have the sight. Now, give me your hands. One each. Don’t be afraid.”

Without hesitation, Tai gives her one, while I wipe the sweat off my left palm onto my jeans and reach out. Her skin is smooth and soft and fine, like a child’s.

Madame Morency shuts her eyes, humming to herself, and a breeze picks up, blowing through the curtain, flickering the candles, and bringing to life the blackened wind chime in the corner. I feel a chill; wasn’t the door closed? Tai looks at me, her eyes wide with the thrill of it.

“Silence,” Madame Morency snaps, and even the wind chime goes quiet. A minute ticks past, the kind that feels as gluey long as an hour. The air is thick with lost memories, with that decayed scent of crumbling brick walls.

When Madame Morency speaks again, her voice is a curious, rasping thing coming from the deepest part of her. “Why did you tell me your mother was dead, girls?”

The hair on the back of my neck pricks up.

“We didn’t say that,” Tai whispers back.

We didn’t say anything about mothers at all.

“The message I am receiving is not coming from the other side,” Madame Morency continues, her hand cooling in mine. “It’s coming from the film between our worlds, the pond scum separating us from them. It says she is not gone.”

I can feel Tai swallow next to me, see the goose bumps colonizing every inch of bare flesh. Her fingers are pale in Madame Morency’s grip, and I can’t feel my own. My eyes are glued to the woman in front of us, with her tightly shut eyes and her craggy face. Looking for signs of mystical truth, of anything at all I can cling to hard.

It says she is not gone.

“Her energy is mirrored across the globe,” she continues. “So strong in places that a lesser psychic would mistake it for the true source. When and where did you last see her?” Madame Morency asks in this wheedling, odd voice. “Be precise.”

I know we both remember: Mama tucked us into bed, wet-eyed, that night at Stökéwood, five years ago. Tears from a migraine, she’d said, shrugging on her favorite gray cashmere housecoat, petal-pink gloves in hand. I didn’t know if she was telling the truth then, and I still don’t. But I never saw her again, so I couldn’t ask.

Tai opens her mouth to answer, but I stiffly shake my head. Dad told us never to share details with strangers. Aunt Marion and Uncle Teddy, too.

“I see her clearest in a hidden tower, extending into the sky,” Madame Morency rasps, when we don’t reply, and even though this means nothing to me, Tai stifles a squeak. She reaches for my free hand with hers, and her bones crunch into mine as Madame Morency speaks. “Otherwise, so many men contaminate her space. How is one supposed to keep a clear head with so many men and their opinions?” She exhales slowly. “Does a red handbag mean anything to you? Cut from the skin of a creature that crawls?”

My stomach falls, but I feel weightless and chilled. I hear the news report in my head: She took with her a red crocodile handbag with a pearl clasp—

But anyone could know that.

“I need as much information as you can provide,” Madame Morency continues in a strange purr. “Don’t be afraid, girls. This is all part of the process.”

Tai’s eyes beg me to let her spill the truth. But I’m already wrenching my hand from the psychic and standing up. In my mind, halfway out the door. This woman is a trickster, a liar, a fraud. My blood rings in my ears. I’m the big sister, and I should’ve known better. I’m trembling with barely contained hurt, tears bubbling into my eyes. I take Tai’s wrist, and she gapes at me.

“Where are you going in your brown wig, little one?” Madame Morency says, a wicked smile coming to her face, eyes still closed. “You can’t hide the truth from me.”

“We’re going.” I pull Tai toward the curtain. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Fine. Run off. But you will find no answers until you go back there,” Madame Morency calls after us. “To the place where you both saw her last.”

But we’re already disappearing down the street, both of us crying for different reasons, Tai ripping the wig off her head with starry-hot eyes and whispering, She’s alive, I knew she’s alive; she’s alive, I knew she’s alive, and my throat burning with fury that I could be so foolish, that I could think anyone would give us answers without trying to use us, that I could be so desperate to believe any voice but the one that feels like it comes from my gut, the frightened one repeating over and over, She’s dead, she’s dead, she’s dead.

I will avoid the block with that psychic’s shop, taking meandering detours that add minutes to my walk, for the next four years.

But as it turns out, the psychic was right.

My little sister Tai and I will find our mama, the woman once known as Mireille Foix Hammick, a decade after she disappeared. After ten years—ten long years spent wandering that purgatory of uncertain loss—it will take only one week to solve our mystery. One week of madness, brilliance, deception, trust, weakness, strength, abandonment, love, and sacrifice in the belly of our birth town, Limatra, and the fringing forest of delirium to its west.

Not everyone will survive this week.

But just as every story comes to an end, it must also start at the beginning.…

NONI

NEW YORK, 2018

“But I’m Mireille Foix’s daughter,” I speak into the cold air, watching my breath cloud and vanish.

My cheeks flush as the words stick in my throat. This is the worst kind of introduction. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve used this excuse—but I’m her daughter—to get my way. I’m not Tai. My sister breathes I’m her daughter. Not me.

The hulking god of a man—bare forearms rivered with veins, even in the cold—stares down at me, shivering in my too-small leather jacket and Mama’s old patched Jordache jeans. We’re standing in front of a bar; specifically, its ivy-draped underground entrance in a West Village town house, blocks from where I’ve lived with Tai and Aunt Marion since I was eight years old. Right next to the psychic’s shop, her storefront even more run-down and overgrown than before.

The bouncer shakes his bald head, egg-shiny in the amber streetlamp light. “And I’m telling you right now, you’re not Mireille Foix’s daughter.”

I’m not going to say it doesn’t hurt, being told I’m not her daughter, but I deserve it. I deserve to feel uncomfortable for trying so hard to fit in with the too-cool girls at my school for the first time, months before graduation. You’re seriously coming out with us? they said, smiling with matte maroon lips, slinging their moms’ beat-up black Hermès Kelly bags over their own forearms, snappable freckled twigs.

I finger my real ID in my pocket. Manon Foix Hammick, it reads. Five foot five—maybe not the aesthetic opposite of Tai’s lithe five foot seven, but it feels that way. Brown eyes that could’ve been pulled from Dad’s skull, nothing like my mother’s and Tai’s blue ones.

Age eighteen.

I deserve to feel uncomfortable for trying so hard to sneak into this stupid bar.

My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I rummage for it, sweaty-palmed. The bouncer snaps his fingers. “Hey,” he says, shooing me down the garbage-filled street with a gesture. “Move along, superstar. No ID, no entry.”

Are you still coming, M? We just ordered a pitcher of elderflower sangria, reads the message from Kelly.

Kell, not Kelly, she said to me, green eyes narrowing when we were making these plans the last day of fall semester. Seriously, Manon? We’ve gone to school together for ten years. You know it’s Kell.

My cheeks burn again thinking about it. It’s impossible to forget how she and her friends treated me when I had just arrived at their fancy prep school. The brightness in their eyes dimmed when they realized I wasn’t exceptional in the flesh, like my parents, like Tai. That I had no more juicy stories about Mama and Dad than the tabloids did. Okay, but what about Viloxin? What’s it like? they would ask. And even though Viloxin—this Eden so closely tied to my parents’ legacy, this foggy island that radiated mystery—was the closest thing I had to an identity … I didn’t remember it. Not well. My Viloki childhood was just a collection of genuine yet elusive feelings, tied to bursts of colors and smells, borrowed from photographs and stories later seen and heard.

So I avoided everyone by hiding in the library during schooldays, and I spent weekends thrift-shopping and visiting botanical gardens with Aunt Marion, my father’s spinster sister and the closest thing to a parent. I trawled the internet and made friends there, anonymously, while Tai thrived in the richly colored limelight of the real world. I hid from the city’s overwhelming stimulation in the church garden twenty steps from this bar, reading book after book (high fantasy, gothic romance, you name it), while everyone else … lived, in this sprawling city that contains millions of lives.

I was afraid of that reality. I’ll admit it now.

But this is the second-to-last semester of senior year. It feels like my last chance to really live, to make up for lost time, to figure out what the cool kids know about the glitzy underbelly of this city loved the world over.

Almost there, I type back, all chapped knuckles and numb fingers.

My phone buzzes immediately. But it’s not a reply from Kell; it’s my sister, calling me for the first time in months.

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