“If you didn’t name her, where did you get her?” Theo asked.

“I answered an ad in the paper. A nice young woman uptown. Very nice. She had kittens and puppies and some other animals that were more difficult to identify, including a few chimera. The number has been disconnected since, though. I called again because I wanted one of her puppies. Looked like wolves with absolutely enormous feet. No telling how big they’d get.” She smiled brightly, as if the thought of ginormous puppies were as delightful as the thought of banal cat names was awful.

“So the ad just said something about pets?” Theo asked.

“No, of course not,” said Aunt Esther.

“Of course not,” said Jaime, one side of his mouth quirking up.

“The ad said, ‘Esther, we have what you’ve been looking for,’ with a phone number. So I called.”

Tess dropped the cookie she’d been holding. “Wait, the ad had your name in it?”

“Why wouldn’t it? I’m quite well-known about the city.”

Theo and Jaime exchanged glances. Theo said, “But Aunt Esther, how—”

“It certainly wasn’t the first personal ad I’ve ever read directed at me. I met my second husband through the personal ads. He was a trapeze artist. Very flexible joints.” Aunt Esther looked at the plate. “Oh, dear. You are all quite the ravenous monsters, aren’t you? I’ll get you more Fig Newtons. It’s a good thing I purchase in bulk.” She swept from the room, leaving them with an empty plate and more questions than answers.

CHAPTER THREE

Jaime

The twins’ aunt brought two more plates full of cookies and more cryptic answers to their questions about Nine, her name, and where she came from. No, Aunt Esther said, she didn’t remember much about the place she picked her up except that it was clean, or remember much about the young woman with the overlarge animals except that she and the animals were clean as well. Cleanliness, said Aunt Esther, was a virtue. Along with curiosity, tenacity, and punctuality. Her third husband wasn’t punctual, and that, she said, was the end of that. Tess reminded her that technically she’d never been married, but Aunt Esther waved this off.

Jaime wondered aloud if being concerned with technicalities was a virtue or a vice and earned a smile and several more cookies.

Even though talking with the twins’ aunt was frustrating, it was also fascinating to Jaime. Aunt Esther was like a character from a novel. Someone ageless and magical like Dumbledore or Gandalf or Galadriel, someone who had lived so many lives that sometimes they got the details mixed up. Or rather, chose very carefully which details they wanted to reveal, because they had learned the hard way to trust no one.