And she kept it up all the way back to Aunt Esther’s, all through their lunch of empanadas from a joint down the street. It was like a wall, Tess’s brightness, a spell she encased herself in, a safe place where she was Not Worried About Anything and Nine was Most Certainly Just Fine and On Her Way Home Right Now. Every once in a while, Theo would touch Tess’s arm or her fingers the way Nine used to nudge—to reassure her, to bring her out of herself, or to tell her to take as long as she needed. Early that morning, Jaime had been so sure that he, that they, could bring Nine home; he was at a loss now that Nine had decided to free herself. But he couldn’t help but worry that Nine hadn’t done any such thing. That she’d been taken. That the woman who had accused the cat of attacking her might have had something to do with it. That Nine wasn’t coming home, not without assistance. But he couldn’t bring himself to say it out loud. Not yet. Instead, he drew sketches of Nine: unlocking a cage; slipping between the bars; sliding under a cracked window; vanishing into the night. He drew dozens of variations and showed the pictures to Tess. With each variation, she smiled her bright smile and squeezed his wrist as if he were actually doing something, as if there were something to thank him for.

Aunt Esther seemed out of sorts herself, deflated somehow, like a magician robbed of magic. She announced that she was off to the market and that she would leave them a plate of Fig Newtons. At Tess’s answering grin, Aunt Esther harrumphed again, added another stack of cookies to the plate before she, too, left.

Theo fetched the metal puzzle from his room upstairs and brought it down to the living room, where they went through the motions of examining it under a magnifying glass. The surface was studded with the occasional stone here or there—a red one, a blue one, but there were far more empty settings than stones.

“There are a lot missing,” said Theo.

“We can solve it,” said Tess, smiling, smiling, smiling.

“Maybe,” said Theo, careful not to mention what he normally would—that is, that the puzzle would be very difficult to solve with a few stones missing, let alone most of them. But Theo, being Theo, tried anyway. And then Jaime took a turn. Tess, surprisingly, or unsurprisingly, worked at it the longest, until she, too, gave up. She passed the cube back to Theo and peeked out the front windows, just in case Nine was home and wanted to get in the house.