Tinker thumped down into the chair in front of the glass of milk.
Lain refused to decorate her cookies; she made her guests go through the extra effort. Esme must have been the one who used the Mickey Mouse cutter to shape the cookies. Esme had painted the mice ears red, green, pink and blue.
“Have you been dreaming of mice?” Tinker asked. Oilcan had told her of his odd dream about the Dufae babies visiting him as mice wearing different colored scarfs. The colors matched up to the ones that Esme used.
“You too?” Esme answered with a question. “My dreams have gotten really weird since I’ve hit Pittsburgh.”
“That’s a yes, then?” Lain asked.
“Oh, God, yes,” Esme said. “Lots of mice. I’m not sure if the mice are literal or figurative. I don’t think we’re going to be besieged by talking mice — but odder things have happened lately. I do think something satisfyingly horrible happened to Yves, but I’m not sure. It seemed very real. Maybe it’s going to happen.”
“Who the hell is Yves?” Tinker asked.
“Our older stepbrother,” Lain said. “Yves Desmarais.”
“Satisfyingly horrible” was not a phrase you usually used when talking about family members.
“What exactly is so horrible about our family?” Tinker said. “Why couldn’t you tell me, Lain, that you were my aunt?”
“Maybe we should start with our news,” Lain said. “It is profoundly disturbing but it should give you a good idea what our family is like.”
“Okay,” Tinker said cautiously. The summer had served up so much disturbing information that Lain’s statement kind of scared her.
Esme sat down directly opposite of Tinker. “A few nights ago, when we were at the morgue, I met that reporter, Chloe Polanski.”
“She’s dead.” Tinker didn’t add, “I killed her.” She wasn’t happy about the blood on her hands.
“Yes, her picture is on the front page of the newspaper.” Lain believed that televised news was more of a popularity contest than real information. She only periodically watched WQED, mostly for Hal Roger’s gardening show. She did get the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette daily and read it front to back.
“At the morgue, I thought I had met Chloe before,” Esme continued. “She seemed very familiar. It wasn’t until her picture was in the paper that it hit me why.”
Lain took an old-fashioned photograph out of her breast pocket and pushed it across the table to Tinker.
For a moment, Tinker thought it was a picture of Chloe. It was more than that the woman had the same pale blue eyes and white-blond hair. She also wore the same bobbed haircut, flawless makeup, and chunky amber necklace. It was as if someone had tried to cosplayer the reporter. The picture appeared to be taken in New York; the Statue of Liberty stood far in the background. The vehicles in the foreground had the sharp-angled styling of the ’70s or ’80s.
Chloe was in her late thirties; she wouldn’t have even been born at the time of the picture.
“Who is this?” Tinker asked.
“That’s our mother,” Esme said. “Anna Shanske Desmarais.”
“What the hell?” Tinker said. “Why would Chloe be cosplaying as your mom?”
“It’s a lot more than that.” Lain fished a necklace out of her pants pocket and put it on the table beside the photo. “Chloe was wearing our mother’s jewelry. Our father, Neil Shanske, had this made for her. See their wedding date was etched on the back of the pendant?”
“Mother loved amber.” Esme tapped the necklace. “She never wore this particular piece after she remarried. Our stepfather showered her with amber jewelry that she would wear instead. She tried to keep this hidden from me. When we were little, I used to tear the mansion apart until I found it. I would march up to her, thrust it at her like a knife, and tell her to put it on. She never would. Shortly after I left for college, she called and asked if I took the necklace with me. She couldn’t find it.”
“She called me during Shutdown to ask about it,” Lain said. “She was sure one of us had taken it but I hated the damn thing.”
“I don’t get it,” Tinker said. “How did Chloe get the necklace and why was she trying to look like your mother?”
“I pulled some strings,” Lain said. “Maynard was surprisingly cooperative when I used your name. I got a DNA sample from Chloe’s body. Based on her mitochondria, Chloe was our sister.”
“She was what?” Tinker said.
“Our sister,” Esme repeated. “The three of us have the same mother.”
Tinker frowned at the piece of jewelry. “Chloe was younger than Lain — but — not that much younger. She would have been born before Lain came to Pittsburgh.”
Lain nodded. “Yes, that’s right. And if she had this necklace, then she had to know who our mother was.”
Stormsong breathed out a laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Tinker asked, since her Hand normally did everything in their power to stay silent and invisible during a discussion.
“Chloe came dressed in black to the morgue,” Stormsong said. “She had planned on taking the bodies of the Stone Clan children so no one could learn the truth about why the oni had kidnapped them. The moment you told Esme that you were her daughter, Chloe nearly tripped over herself trying to flee.”
Tinker had noticed that Chloe seemed very unsettled by the news. It had puzzled her. “What’s so important about Esme being my mother?”
Stormsong shifted closer to the table. “If Chloe knew that Esme was a strong intanyai seyosa, she would have had to believe that you were too. Such abilities are passed by the mother’s bloodline. It would instantly explain how you’ve managed to do so many impossible things. What’s more, Chloe’s blood tie to you through Esme’s mother would mean it would have been easy for her nuenae to overlap with yours.”
“My what?” Tinker knew that Stormsong had used the term before but she wasn’t totally sure she understood the word.
“Nuenae.” Stormsong repeated and then paused, thinking. “I don’t know the English word for it — if there is one. It is basically the world that you are trying to grow. Intanyai seyosa literally means ‘someone who sows or farms the future.’ When your nuenae overlaps with another intanyai seyosa, you share visions of things that might affect your shared future. It’s why you and your mother were both having Wizard of Oz dreams. It was also why the tengu dream crow, Gracie Wong, was part of those visions — she was trapped on the damaged spaceship with your mother. She would share any future that Esme created. The more you interact with someone related to you, the more the nuenae transpose. Chloe had already interacted with you once. At the morgue, when she learned that you shared her bloodline, she realized any prolonged interactions with you would make it probable that you would dream of what she had planned.”
Chloe Polanski had been Tinker’s aunt and she had killed her. That totally sucked. It was also totally weird: Chloe knew that she was Esme’s sister but Esme hadn’t?
“How did you not know about her?” Tinker asked the sisters. “Why wouldn’t your mother tell you that you had a younger sister? Or is it some weird compulsion that the women of our family have — to have secret babies that we scatter about the landscape like breadcrumbs?”
“We don’t think our mother knows about Chloe,” Lain said.
“But — but — but — Chloe knew who she was!” Tinker thumped the table beside the jewelry. “If she had this necklace, then she’d been to your mother’s house. Right?”
Esme gave a bitter laugh. “Not necessarily. Yves or one of the boys could have taken it.”