8:25 a.m.

Nocturnal beings were not supposed to sleep at night, yet Julien slept. It could have been Iman's insistence that he rest, or that the night's traumatic events had thrown off his already odd circadian rhythm (if dead people had circadian rhythms still), or any number of reasons. All Julien knew was that when he woke up to the gentle sounds of birds chirping and the not-so-gentle sting of sunlight on his face, he felt like vomiting.

In fact, he reached for the nearest trashcan and did precisely that.

It was the best and worst he'd ever felt—barring the night after he died, when he'd woken with the strange motley of sensations that accompanied all your organs collapsing and rebirthing themselves again. Sounds were sharper: tires against asphalt, birdsong, the call of a paperboy somewhere far down the street. Scents were louder: Iman's rosy perfume, olive oil sizzling in the kitchen, gasoline and rain-soaked pavement beyond the window. Even his vision seemed cleaner. So why did his mind feel so muddled?

He staggered into the hall, waiting, listening. He heard the low hiss of something cooking on the stove, a hum under someone's breath. Iman? He thought, but knew immediately afterwards that it wasn't. He knew what her pulse sounded like, how her blood smelled. This soothing, reliable heartbeat, like someone constantly at rest, could not be the girl he knew.

He rounded the corner.

Beck, wearing plaid pajama pants and a henley that was missing a button, blinked up at him. "Oh. You're still here?"

Julien scowled. "I could ask the same of you."

Beck frowned, twirling a rubber spatula in the air. "I," he said, turning back to the stove, upon which two neat over-easy eggs cooked, "have a key. You do not. I feel that's worth pointing out."

Behind him, Julien rolled his eyes. "How's your arm, Caulfield?"

"Fine," said Beck without turning. "Didn't take nearly as much damage as my psyche."

"Jesus," Julien said, leaning over the counter. He hated it, but Beck's breakfast smelled good. Like salt and pepper and an assortment of other spices he couldn't remember the name of. The sizzle of it all was driving him crazy. Not because he couldn't eat it, but because he couldn't enjoy it. "Please don't get all philosophical on me, man. It's too early for that."

The sizzling ceased; a moment later Beck turned, the two eggs plated beside a crumble of chorizo and a slice of avocado. It looked so appetizing that it made Julien want to punch something. Something with glasses and an apparently damaged psyche.

"I won't. I just have questions."

"Questions?"

"Questions."

Julien had questions, too. Like where the hell Iman was and why she wasn't rescuing him.

Beck misinterpreted Julien's silence as a go-ahead and asked, "For one, I've noticed you eyeballing my breakfast. Can you eat? Like, things besides blood?"

Julien hated that question, of all questions. Iman had asked it one Christmas back in the 80s; he couldn't remember which. He just remembered the rest of the night not going very well. "Yes," he said, and left it at that.

"Do you want an egg, then?"

"No," he lied. He was not going to accept that egg if his very wellbeing depended on it. He could feel it starting: the attachment. Just because he liked Beck for Iman's sake did not mean he liked him personally.

He was going to fight this friendship with all his remaining vitality—which, to be fair, was not much. But it had to be enough.

Beck frowned. "But garlic. The whole thing about garlic being bad is legit?"

"Unfortunately," said Julien, drawing a line through a coffee ring on the island with his nail. "I'm Mexican. You can imagine how devastated I was when I figured that one out."

Beck grimaced as if that were an accurate display of sympathy. His fork clinked against his plate. "So wooden stakes—"

"Why—"

"The whole thing about you guys turning into bats—"

"No."

"Caskets?"

"Hell, no!"

"Crosses?"

"For fuck's sake, you should have figured that one out for yourself!" Julien said, and jumped to his feet. He crossed the room to the hall closet, rifled through it until he found an adequate hooded jacket, and marched for the front door. "I'm going home. Tell Iman to call me when she gets back from...from wherever the hell she is."

Beck cast an anxious glance towards the sun-tinted window. "Well—okay."

"And one more thing," Julien snapped, pausing at the door as he yanked the hood over his head, "You type O?"

Beck hesitated, but nodded.

Julien gagged. He'd known it. "You guys think you're so special. Universal donors, and all that shit," he said. "Well, tell you what. Your blood's flavorless."

Julien slammed the door after him.

The day was cool, one of those crisp, half-warm, half-cold days that made the transition from summer to autumn obvious. Iman sat in the thick of it, stationed on a bench in the city park, a light jacket tossed around her shoulders. She had lunch with her sisters today, which pressed at the back of her mind like a throbbing headache. But first—Julien. First she had to save Julien.

Leaves rustled as the wind blew by, the trees swaying and then swinging upright again. Iman let out a breath, raking one side of her curls behind her ear and getting to her feet. She was not a scientist. In high school, in fact, she'd despised science. But some way, somehow, she had to help him. She had to make sure he wouldn't starve himself again.

At first she found nothing at the foot of the trees but the things that were supposed to be there. Grass, acorns, roots. She walked around, hands shoved awkwardly in her pockets, her head hung. Oak, pine, hickory. Nothing. Until—

Her heart clenched at the sight of it. It was like nothing I'd ever seen before, Julien had said. Shriveled and small, like its life force has been vacuumed out of it. It was a chipmunk, curled between the roots of the tallest oak tree in the park. It was tiny, tinier than tiny, wrinkled and fragile like a raisin. As she slid a glove over her hand and reached out to nudge the poor animal, she almost expected it to crumble away.

It was stiff. Cold. Dead for who knows how long.

Just what killed you? she wondered.

She cast a wary look around, double-checking that the coast was clear. Then she slid the corpse into a sandwich bag and walked away.

12:23 P.M.

Iman remembered the first time she had traveled as if it were yesterday, and not sixteen years ago.

It was October, and it was raining. She remembered pressing her hands and her face to the kitchen window, counting the raindrops as they slid down the pane, betting on which would win the race to the edge. Behind her, the kitchen filled with the scents of tamarind, cumin, and chili pepper, something on the stove hissing and popping. Her father hummed as he cooked, singing under his breath in Gujarati. Though she tried to pick apart the words she knew, it wasn't enough to make anything cohesive.

Iman's father called to her. She turned, catching the gleam of fondness in his eyes as he smiled at her. She threw her arms wide, pivoting. She had only staggered a few steps toward him before she was gone.

She still remembered the strangling grip of confusion and fear that had seized her. She didn't know where she was or how she got there. The autumn rain was gone, her kitchen was gone, her father was gone. All little Iman could hear was the hum of cicadas and the rustle of wind through emerald leaves. Summer, she thought, her mind clawing for something, anything, that made sense. But when was it summer?

When she finally returned, her parents had held her for hours as she wept, and her sisters watched.

Mostly she remembered her mother's words as she had stroked Iman's hair, her fingers going down and then up again, down and up. "They warned us," she had said, her eyes on her husband's. "They warned us, didn't they?"

They warned us.

Even now, nearly twenty-three, Iman still wasn't exactly sure who they were.

Sometimes when Iman spoke to her family it seemed as though nothing had changed between the terrified six-year-old she was then, and the adult she was now. Iman was a delivery marked with glaring yellow FRAGILE tape: never to be shaken, this side up, handle with care.

No one would talk about her time traveling if they didn't have to—as if that one section of her life was blasphemous, a profane word ought never to be spoken. This was how Iman could love her family and be so unimaginably frustrated with them at the same time. How exhausting it was to love.

She met Hana and Cam at a taco joint near Independence Avenue. It was the sort of place Iman loved, and that she figured Julien would love, too. It was the sort of place that compensated for its appearance with its food. Though both the interior and exterior paint were peeling and the windows were smudged and the sign that named the place Star Taco was tilted, Iman would swear by their carne asada.

It was also the sort of place, Iman realized, that her sisters probably wouldn't care for.

Iman was early—or perhaps Hana and Cam were late. Close to half past noon, the two of them bustled in side by side, looking like everything their mother had always wanted them to be. Had always wanted Iman to resemble. Hana: tall, graceful, elegant, russet skin (a gift from their father, mostly), left exposed by a glittery tank top. Cam: young, innocent, dark curling hair (a gift from their mother, mostly) nearly to her waist. They were peas in a pod, her two sisters, and Iman was—well, Iman.

Iman watched her older sister Hana give Star Taco's dilapidated appearance a perfunctory glance, Hana's hand lifting to fiddle with her collar. Cam, the youngest of the sisters Patel, noticed Iman first. Cam waved her arms frantically above her head, tugging on Hana's sleeve and dragging her towards the corner booth Iman had snagged.

Iman set down the menu she'd been falsely studying, like she didn't already know her order word for word. "Took you long enough," she said, tenting her hands.

Cam and Hana slid into the booth across from her, Cam reaching immediately for a menu, Hana pausing to pick at something underneath her nail. "Took you long enough," she said, widening her eyes at Iman. "You're so elusive, you know that? Like those freaky silver things with all the legs."

Cam set the menu down with an overzealous thwack. "Did you just compare Immy to a silverfish?"

"Silverfish," Hana said with a click of her teeth. "Right. That's what they're called. You're like a silverfish."

"Thank you," Iman said. "Thank you very much for that. I'm positively flattered."

A waiter with a brilliant smile and who spoke heavily-accented English swung by to drop off water and chips and salsa. Hana eyed the chip basket with an air of obvious caution before reaching for one. "So how are things here—"

"Why are you home?"

Hana blinked, while Cam's gaze slid in between the two of them, awkwardly trying to analyze the sudden silence.

Hana's manicured hands reached to stir her straw around her glass of water, an aimless movement that was driving Iman insane the more she watched it. "Why am I home? What do you mean, why am I home? For family. Why else?"

But you have a family, Iman wanted to say. You have a rich white husband who kisses babies and gives speeches at town halls and a pair of spoiled twin boys and people that buy your groceries for you. You have a family and it isn't us anymore. "If that were true," Iman began, measuring the inflection in her voice, trying to keep it at a minimum, "then this wouldn't be such a rare occasion, now would it?"

Cam said, "Iman—"

Hana waved her off, pursing her lips. "No," she said. "She's right. Isn't she, Cam?"

Cam opened her mouth to speak, hesitated, and opened it again. "Well, it has been a while since you've called, or anything...Iman usually calls at least once a week or so...and Mom and Dad get lonely at home without us, you know..."

The conversation puttered out into nothing. Hana and Iman regarded each other in silent contempt, and Cam tried in vain to filter through the silent contempt. The waiter came back, brilliant smile slightly compromised once he, too, noticed the silent contempt.

They ordered tacos. They were still silent.

Finally, Iman could not take it any longer. Her frustration was something palpable, building and building in her throat until it threatened to suffocate her. "We're not doing a whole lot of talking, are we?"

Hana's nose crinkled. "What?"

"You called me here because you said you wanted to talk about things," Iman said, leaning back against the booth and heaving a deep sigh. She breathed in tomato, cilantro, garlic. Nevermind, she backtracked randomly. Julien would hate this place. "And yet"—she gestured vaguely in the air— "here we are, not talking."

Hana interlaced her fingers; the overhead light glinted against the diamond ring on her finger. Iman recalled the day her sister had gotten married with stunning clarity. The wedding was beautiful. The ceremony was beautiful. The first dance was beautiful. Yet it was all beautiful in the way their three-tier cake covered in blanched fondant and bejeweled with candy rhinestones was beautiful. Overly saccharine. More sugar than substance.

Iman's life was extremely far from perfect. But at least it was not falsely perfect.

"I don't want..." Hana sighed and raked her hair behind her ear. It was pressed straight, keratin-treated, the bouncing curls of her childhood long gone now. "I don't want to fight with you, Iman."

"Then don't," Iman said, tapping her nails across the lacquered wood. She noticed Cam swallow and look away, and felt an echo of guilt in the pit of her stomach. The ebb and flow of Hana and Iman's relationship had nothing to do with her, and yet Cam was always caught up in it. She had other things to worry about, like her first year of college, like getting a job, like enjoying youth.

"Don't," Iman said again. "Just say what we all know you came here to say, Hana. It's the same goddamn thing every time."

Hana hesitated, a hesitation that was only extended when their food arrived. Cam reached for hers, seemed to realize that neither of her older sisters were doing the same, and dropped her hand with a sigh.

Hana winced as she said the words. "Your traveling, Iman," she said. "Has it—stopped?"

Iman wanted to laugh, but choked it into a scoff under her breath for the sake of her sister's pride. "Do you stop breathing?"

"What? No."

"Exactly," said Iman. "So, no."

Hana made a flippant noise in the back of her throat. "You know it's not normal! What I don't get is why you're so...so okay with it!"

"You're right, Hana," said Iman. She flicked at her straw with slightly more force. "It isn't normal. It isn't diamond ring, beautiful two-acre white picket fence property in rural Virginia normal, so it's not normal at all, right?"

Her older sister rolled her eyes. "That's not even logical. You know that's not even logical."

"Hana," Iman snapped. "I'm fine. I'm fine as I am, and nothing's going to change about that. So can you stop treating me like a basket case, please?"

Hana's voice dropped to a near-whisper, her brown eyes, so deep, so dark, just like their father's, blinking at Iman. "Immy," she said. "Immy, I'm worried about you."

Iman called for a box. Once the waiter handed it off to her, she precariously transferred her three carne asada tacos into the styrofoam and eased it shut. "No, Hana," said Iman, the chair squealing across the tiles as she got to her feet. She fished a ten dollar bill from her pocket and dropped it onto the table. "You're worried about how I make you look."

Iman turned to go, stopped, and turned around again. "Cam?"

Cam, previously staring at the table in pure dejection, looked up with a flicker of hope. "Yeah?"

"Tell Mom and Dad I said hi, okay?" she said. "And don't go to any more frat parties. They're cancerous."

Iman left. Her car, she discovered in utter dismay, smelled like death. Nevertheless, she sat in the driver seat, wrestling her phone from her pocket and dialing Julien's number.

You've reached Julien Morales. I'm probably asleep, or maybe committing a brutal murder, depending on my mood, said his voicemail. Leave a name and number and we'll see what mood I'm in when I call you back.

The phone beeped in her ear.

"Jules," she said with an exhale. "I'm just calling to tell you that I'm going to find you an answer."