Page 174 of Nobody Told Me Thrift Shops Sell Stolen Dragon Heirlooms

He bumped my knee once. Hard.

“I’m—” Cough. “I’m⁠—”

He bumped me again, then turned and grabbed the water bottle from the floor beside the bed with his mouth. It was too big for his mouth and already half-crushed, but he got it between his teeth and shoved it against my shin like he was delivering field medicine under fire.

I took it, coughing hard enough that my eyes watered.

“Thank you,” I wheezed.

Max stared at me until I drank. Only then did he sit.

I patted his head with a shaky hand.

He looked at the ramen.

“No. You may not confiscate the choking hazard.”

I rewound the episode, paused on the clearest shot, and took a picture with my phone. Then I zoomed in until the image blurred around the edges but the incense burner was still visible.

My heart had started doing that unhelpful pitter-patter.

Maybe I was wrong. Fever and fixation could create strange patterns in the human brain. But I had stared at enough scanned family records to know that shape. Those feet. That rim. The repaired handle.

I sent the photo to Rafe.

Me: Tell me I’m wrong.

Rafe: Why are you watching that phoenix?

I stared at the message, then studied the screen.

Me: What phoenix???

My phone rang, Rafe’s name on the screen.

I answered on speaker because my hands were busy zooming in again. “Do you mean linen staircase guy?”

“Dimitris Burelian,” Rafe said.

“That’s Dimitris?”

“Yes.”

I knew phoenix fire could return him to a younger body. Knowing it and seeing him in his younger form were different experiences. On my television, Dimitris smiled at the host beside a wall of artifacts, handsome in a lazy, golden way that made him look like he had never once carried groceries in the rain.

“That is profoundly unfair.” I looked at the screen again, then past him to the object on the display shelf. I tapped the screenshot. “But more importantly: is that the incense burner behind him?”

The line went quiet long enough that my chest tightened for a reason unrelated to illness.

“Rafe?”

“Send the timestamp.”

I did.

A moment later, I heard keys clicking. He didn’t seem frantic. Rafe didn’t do frantic. But the silence had weight now.

“It could be a replica,” he said.