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“I’ve been trying to call you for hours.”

“Sorry,” I say, wincing a little when I remember the time difference and realize she’s probably been up all night. “Things were a little hectic.”

“I bet they were.”

I give Cleo a brief rundown of everything we saw and heard, putting my phone on speaker and pulling up a browser to look at today’s headlines.

Right there, at the top of the search results, is a scathing takedown of Haverstad, with all the details about whathappened last night and a promise of more reporting to come in the following days.

Audra’s name is proudly on the byline and, with another memory surfacing, I fire off a text to her about the flash drive. She responds in seconds, saying she’ll send a reporter she trusts to pick it up, since she’s currently knee deep in the chaos she unleashed when her story hit the news cycle.

“Lia,” Cleo interrupts my multitasking. “How areyoudoing?”

“I’m great,” I answer automatically. “With everything Audra’s going to be reporting in the next couple of weeks, Haverstad’s cooked. And we’ve already agreed the Bureau’s going to be kept out of it, so—”

“Lia,” she says again. “That’s not what I mean. I mean, how are you, really?”

I pause for a moment, shifting out of the mindset of a PI giving a rundown of the case to her client, back to just Ophelia, talking to my sister.

“I’m alright.”

It’s Cleo’s turn to pause. The silence on the other end of the line stretches for a few seconds as she decides whether she’s going to believe me.

“I’m sorry for putting you in the middle of this,” she says finally. “I heard that there was a gun involved last night, that it could have escalated into more violence, and—”

“It’s fine.” The familiar instinct to deny, to downplay, is a hell of a thing, even when a renewed surge of fear and dread twists my gut at the reminder of just how much worse things could have gone.

“It’s not,” Cleo insists. “You always do this.”

“Do what?”

“You know exactly what.”

Even from the other side of the country, I can hear the eye roll in her voice, and imagine the look of older-sister disapproval that’s probably clear as day on her face.

“Yeah, well. I kind of have to.”

The words slip out before I can stop them and prompt another weighted silence from Cleo.

“What do you mean?”

Are we really doing this right now? As much as I know I owe my sister some answers and some honesty, I also know my brain is still half-scrambled from everything that went down in the graveyard and a night of terrible sleep.

“Lia. What do you mean?”

Alright. Fuck it. We’re doing this.

“You know what I mean. The way it’s always been, with me trying to keep up.”

“Keep up with who?”

“With you. With dad. With all the paranormals we grew up around. It’s a little hard to be a human in that kind of company andnotfeel like you have to keep up.”

“Did I make you feel like that?” she asks, voice heavy with guilt. “God, I didn’t mean to. I never meant to make you feel… I only wanted to—”

“I know,” I say quickly, trying and failing to rein in the hitch in my voice, the way it breaks on the end of the word. “It’s just… it’s just how it is. Facts are facts, and I’m not going to have… the same kind of life you and mom and dad have. So I’ve always tried to make the most of it.”

“Lia,” Cleo breathes. “Why have we never talked about this? Is this how you’ve always felt?”