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“Lex—”

“ Nobody. “

“Lex.”

That was Maksim, and he was not loud. He rose beside me, and his hand came up slowly and settled on the back of my neck, cold and steady. The thing with teeth lifted its head and looked at him.

“Breathe,” he said. “With me. In.”

I breathed in.

“Out.”

I breathed out.

“Again.”

I did it four times. On the fifth, the roar in my ears dropped to a hum, and I realized I’d been shaking. I sat down. Tamsin was watching me with an odd, careful expression, as though I’d just done something she’d never seen a human do.

“That’s the thing your dad meant,” I said, to nobody. “About my temper.”

“It is nothing to be ashamed of,” said Maksim.

“It’s a lot to be ashamed of.”

“It is a great weight. It is not the same.”

I looked at him. He looked back at me with those steady gray eyes, and I felt the last of the thing settle, like a dog turning three times and lying down.

“Okay,” I said, hoarsely. “So what do we do?”

“We do not panic,” said Tamsin.

“Great. I’m great at that.”

“We watch. We wait. Marcus will keep the bar quiet. I’ll ask around, quietly, about Brandt. Sabine—” she glanced at Maksim, “—is already on a plane to Boston to look at Roake’s old house.”

“Sabine’s what? “

“She insisted.” Maksim’s mouth twitched. “She said, and I quote, ‘I will not have a surgeon with a camera ruin the best thing that has happened to my brother since the invention of the printing press.’ She has been listening to too many podcasts.”

“She sounds great.”

“She is terrifying.”

“I want to meet her.”

“You will.” He hesitated. “In time.”

I looked at the photograph of Roake’s face. It was such a tired face. It was the face of a man who’d stopped sleeping six years ago and hadn’t found a reason to start.

“He lost his wife,” I said.

Silence.

“Sorry,” I said. “I know. I just— it’s a sad face. That’s all.”

Tamsin and Maksim exchanged a long look I couldn’t read.