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“Ms. Ryder will be staying at Mrs. Popova’s until Mr. Nguyen can pick you both up.” I twitched, dismay running through me,and then I realized she was talking to Liam. Of course. He was heading back. “The weather still isn’t clear for a crossing, but it should be tomorrow,” she concluded. Dr. Kapoor’s accent was solidly American, without any of the clipped precision of Liam’s British accent. She was short, barely coming up to Liam’s shoulder, and her brown-black hair was cropped within an inch of her scalp. She had a glare that would intimidate a wolverine, and currently it was fixed on me.

Abby didn’t look concerned. She had twenty-four hours to figure something out, and she struck me as the sort of person who could do a lot with far less time.

“Ms. Hayes,” Dr. Kapoor said sharply, startling me back into the present. “Do you need a printed invitation?”

I realized she was holding the office door open for me. I slinked in past Abby, who gave me a little wave. Lily was coming down the hall to collect her. Even after a single night of acquaintance, she felt like the best ally I had, and I didn’t want to be separated so soon. But I didn’t see how to object without raising suspicion. Liam trailed in after me, and I remembered that he, too, would be leaving soon. I’d be alone.

No more alone than I’d always been, I told myself.

“I do not expect you to know anything,” Dr. Kapoor said without preamble. “I do expect you to learn. I expect you to ask questions, and not to assume answers. The worst thing that you can do isguessat what you are meant to be doing out of embarrassment or fear of looking foolish.”

I blinked. Apparently we weren’t going to discuss last night.

“Did you hear me?” Dr. Kapoor asked.

“Uh. Yes. Sorry, I thought we were going to talk about—”

“You are here to learn, and to work. That is all you should be worried about, Ms. Hayes,” Dr. Kapoor said. She crossed her arms. My gaze wandered hopefully to the chairs by the desk, my legs still achy from last night’s strain, but I could tell Dr. Kapoor was the kind of person that thought sitting just invited wasting time. Liam, however, plopped into one and threw his arm over the back. Dr. Kapoor ignored him. “You should know that most of our work is repetitive, tedious, meticulous, and dull. It’s also often cold, wet, and physically demanding.”

“You mentioned,” I replied. “In your emails.”

“Seventeen emails,” Dr. Kapoor said crisply. “To your thirty-nine. There are birds everywhere, Ms. Hayes, and I have difficulty believing that you are so fixated on a minor tern that you simply had to study these ones. But persistence in the face of repeated failure is an admirable trait in a scientist, even if it is absurdly irritating on a personal level, so. Here we are. Any questions?”

“Hello!” a voice shouted behind me

I jumped and squawked in surprise. I whirled around and came face-to-face with a huge black raven crouched in a cage. Its throat feathers were ruffled, its beak cracked open as it examined me with bright black eyes. Its cage was secured with a fat padlock and covered with toys made of nuts and bolts and carabiners, things to twist and open.

It cocked its head to the side, examining me with my face flushed, the startled exclamation still on my lips—and it broke out into cackling, almost human laughter.

“Asshole,” I muttered.

“He gets that a lot,” Liam said, deeply amused.

Dr. Kapoor gave the bird a fond smile, and I remembered what Liam had said about her “feathered children.” “This is Moriarty,” she said.

“Hello, hello,” Moriarty croaked, and shifted from foot to foot. Then he chortled, his beak jerking spasmodically, his feathers puffing out around him. He flapped his wings twice, then settled back into a piercing, silent regard.

“Does he have scientific value, or do you keep him around to scare visitors?” I asked, giving him a dire look. He cracked his beak in what I could swear was a mocking smile.

“Mostly the latter,” Dr. Kapoor replied. “He’s an excellent mimic. He’s managed to convince more than one undergrad the LARC is haunted. I trust you’re made of sterner stuff.”

“I am, definitely,” I said, trying to sound both confident and obedient and like I hadn’t just gotten panicked by a glorified Halloween prop. Behind his mom’s back, Liam threw me an exaggerated thumbs-up and agreat jobnod, and I resisted the urge to roll my eyes at him.

Dr. Kapoor snorted. “Let’s see how long that earnestness lasts when you’re trying to count chicks from a hundred yards away in a driving rain. All right. The red-throated tern nests in spring. Eggs hatch in May and June. You’ve come at the tail end of hatching, which means we’ve got hundreds of gray fluffballs to locate, identify, and document. It is simple and boring work, and I do not yet trust you not to fuck it up. So you’re going to observe today, and get familiar with the other side of the island.”

“Belaya Skala?” I asked.

“You know why it’s called that?” she asked, but didn’t wait for an answer. “Whatever idiot ‘discovered’ this place thought the rocks on the headland were covered in snow in the middle of summer. Thus, ‘White Rock.’ Turns out it wasn’t snow. It was bird shit. But for some reason they decided ‘Bird Shit Rock’ lacked poetry. So they stuck with Belaya Skala and Gorkaya Skala for the two halves of the island.”

“Gorkaya Skala is Bitter Rock?” I asked.

“Indeed. And the translated version stuck as the name for the whole island when Alaska became part of the United States,” she confirmed.

“The Russians did have another name for the island,” Liam said. His mother shot him A Look, but he just grinned. “Ostrov Dyavola. The Devil’s Island.”

“Why would they call it that?” I asked, mouth dry.

“Superstition and sensationalism,” Dr. Kapoor snapped. “There’s no way over to Belaya Skala by foot, so we go by boat. I’ll meet you at the dock in ten minutes. Liam? You’ll come along.” It had a veryso I can keep my eye on youundertone to it. This was apparently a dismissal, because she headed out the door without another word. My nerves were jangling, but I’d survived my first face-to-face meeting with Dr. Kapoor.