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“How am I supposed to think about it?”
“You’ve got four sets of people who want different things. Right now, those different things overlap, so it makes sense to work together. When they don’t overlap anymore, we go our separate ways.”
“I don’t know what Auggie wants.” Jem opened his mouth, and Tean rushed to add, “Besides my picture.”
Jem cracked a smile. “It seems like he wants a spanking.”
A laugh slipped out of Tean. “Jem.”
“What? Theo’s a zaddy, and Auggie knows he’s pushing his buttons.” Tean laughed again in spite of himself. Rubbing Tean’s shoulder, Jem said, “Look, it feels crazy if you think of it too big, like, ‘We’re going to save Missy and find Yesenia’s killer.’ So, start small. We’ve done this before, right? We can do it again. Right now, all we need to do is learn as much as we can from people at the conference. Starting with Rod.”
“Because he’s a suspect. Because he might have killed Yesenia and framed Missy.”
“Well, Yesenia was going to build her next safari around here. I wouldn’t be too happy if I were Rod. Although at least Rod has tiger kittens, so I guess that’s ok.”
“Cubs. Or whelps.” When Jem stared blankly, Tean added, “Not kittens.”
“I’m going to call them kittens.”
“And he doesn’t have any; certified sanctuaries don’t breed animals. That’s kind of the whole point, actually.”
“You’re telling me there’s not one goddamn kitten in this whole place?”
“Cubs,” Tean said. “Ok, let’s go look for Rod.”
But they couldn’t find Rod. At first, that didn’t seem too strange; it was a major social event for the conference, and if Rod wasn’t busy talking to other conference-goers, then he was probably dealing with the logistics of the cocktail party or had been drawn away to deal with sanctuary business. So, Jem and Tean circulated, chatting with the other people in attendance, leading the conversation to Yesenia or Missy or Rod—all easy topics, considering the events of the last day.
They talked to a man in a VIETNAM VET trucker hat who spoke in a way that made spit bubble between his teeth. “She’s supposed to fix everything,” he said. “Like something needed fixing. How’s she going to fix anything if she goes running off when her period hits?”
“Charming,” Tean muttered as Jem steered him away.
“I gave him your phone number,” Jem said. “He wants to connect on LinkedIn.”
“He probably does want to connect on LinkedIn. He’s probably going to add me as a friend, and then he’ll post something inappropriate, and then my boss will see it, and I’ll get fired. Guilt by association.”
“Probably,” Jem said and licked his ear.
Wiping at the saliva, Tean skittered away. “Jem!”
A woman with an eyepatch and fine-lined scars raking her forehead stared at them.
Jem laughed. “What?”
“Go away,” Tean said, giving Jem a shove.
“He tastes even better than he looks,” Jem told the woman.
Her one eye got bigger.
Tean gave Jem another shove. “This is a work event. You’re acting crazy tonight.”
“Come on, I was goofing around.”
“Go goof around somewhere else,” Tean said and stalked away.
He made it ten yards before he looked over his shoulder, and by then, Jem was slinking through the crowd, shoulders stooped. Tean wiped at his ear again. First the almost-fight about the clothes at the hotel, then Jem’s eruption when they got to the party, now this. For a moment, Tean almost went after him. But Jem didn’t look back, and after another moment, Tean turned his attention to the party.
For the next hour, Tean made his way through the crowd, and with every minute that passed, he was reminded that this was exactly when he needed Jem most. His conversations stalled or petered out or, in rare occasions, exploded. Universally, they failed to provide anything useful. He talked to a man with a tattoo of a 1965 Mustang on his neck—Tean knew it was a 1965 Mustang because the man made a point of telling him—who wanted Tean to, quote, “go for a ride with him in the dark,” after Tean had mentioned once—once!—the inevitability of cell death. A woman in a Stars-and-Stripes jumpsuit held him captive for fourteen minutes and twenty-seven seconds talking about the differences between ferrets and stoats, ignoring Tean’s every attempt to steer the conversation back to Yesenia. A sweaty, red-faced man in a vegan leather jacket became agitated when Tean pointed out the statistically higher odds of dying on a toilet in Missouri. That was when Jem hooked Tean by the sleeve, pulled him away, and pointed up toward the welcome center, where Rod had just emerged from a side door.
