It was difficult to converse with Mictlan while they walked back across the plains, which Ness thought was probably for the best— Mira did not seem to be in any mood for conversation. The three walked single file, back the way Mira and Ness had just come. They had a long walk ahead of them, and Ness was extremely unenthusiastic about it.

“Yellow,” Valerie answered, shifting her eyes away from Lucca. She felt suddenly shy, and was unwilling to see the expression they would give her in reply. She suppressed a shudder as she imagined the scenario Lucca had asked about, but she also imagined herself enduring it. Surviving it.

As Ness grew accustomed to her magically-enhanced sense of smell, she realized that she could discern not only Mictlan’s trail, and hints of the wild animals around them— but also the scent of Mira’s skin, silky and spicy, and the salt tang of her sweat. She ran harder, muscles burning despite the magic coursing through her. She ran hard enough that she couldn’t think of how good Mira’s skin would feel, with all of that energy surging through her.

Valerie had finished nearly all of her oatmeal, and a second cup of black diner coffee, but she couldn’t handle another bite of the now-cold porridge. Lucca flagged down their server, and a few minutes later she dropped off the check.

“Ness, wake up.” … “Ness, come on!” The voice was urgent, quiet, and right next to her ear. Ness groaned exhaustedly, and tried to roll away from it.

Valerie did not, in general, enter Dana’s closets. The woman selected for her what she would wear each morning, and it was not a subject that was up for debate. She wasn’t forbidden from the closets, but she never had any reason to enter. The one time she had wandered in, bored from being left to her own devices during one of Dana’s trips, she had felt guilty, as though she was invading Dana’s privacy. She had not lingered.

“No no no no no no no no—” Ness was hugging her knees to her chest at the side of the trail, hyperventilating.

Lucca brought Valerie a glass of water, and helped her move to a sitting position. The reversal— the sudden care, the tenderness— felt confusing and unsafe to Valerie; but she drank the water all the same, and the act of doing so helped her tamp down the sobbing, and gain some measure of control over her emotions. It wasn’t much.

Lucca led — practically dragged — Valerie up to Dana’s bedroom. One of the room’s walls was decorated with a sculptural panel about eight feet long, of dark walnut slats. The slats ran floor to ceiling, and were mounted to the wall on their narrow edge and spaced evenly apart. Each slat was carved into an organic series of curves and arches, reinforced with black steel edge-work. Each arch was a potential attachment point, and a hidden panel opened to a neatly organized set of locks and other hardware. Restraints, rope, or chain could be attached almost anywhere across the surface, and Dana regularly bound Valerie against the wall for whatever teasing or torture she had in mind; or merely as an objet d’art to admire. Valerie was very familiar with this section of wall.

Dana answered the door, and Lucca was there. They were a silhouette in the doorway, resplendent in the afternoon light. Even from that first moment, something felt off. Dana expected a Lucca that was relaxed, maybe even eager to have Valerie to themself for a few days; but instead, they seemed dour, and tense. They seemed unhappy.